93rd Academy Awards: A strong Adapted Screenplay race

by Eric Blume

We have our strongest list of contenders for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar that we’ve had in years…I’d argue one of the strongest ever.  These five films represent vastly different stories and emphasize different screenwriting strengths, and involve an array of intelligent decisions from the writers in delivering the best cinematic experience possible based on their source material...

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WGA Nominations -- Good news for late breaking streaming titles

by Nathaniel R

The White Tiger is a surprise nominee at the WGA

The Writers Guild of America will have their awards ceremony on March 21st, 2021 but today they announced their nominations.  It's always a bit tricky to look at this in the context of the Oscars since the eligibility rules are different. Though the WGA also extended their eligibilty period to match with Oscar (as you'll see given a couple of their nominees), several key films each year are not eligible. You can't be nominated for a WGA unleses you're already a member of their guild; in other words at the WGA you'd never get a situation like, say, you had with Parasite winning the SAG Award. Furthermore animated films are not eligible for this prize but are obviously eligible at the Oscars; Shrek was nominated and Pixar has had 7 nominees: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL•E, Up, and Toy Story 3)

The nominees and Oscar related commentary is after the jump...

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"Gold List" Outstanding Asian and Pacific Islander (API) achievements

by Nathaniel R

Despite all the amazing advances in diversity in film over the past few years one group that remains extremely underrepresented in American cinema is people of Asian descent. Even when an Asian-centered film breaks through to major success, awards are compartmentalized. You've probably noticed that even if said film wins Best Picture (Parasite, Slumdog Millionaire, The Last Emperor) no actors are nominated in the acting categories. Only three actors of Asian descent have ever won Oscars: Miyoshi Umeki for Sayonara (1957), Ben Kingsley for Gandhi (1982), and Dr Haing S Ngor for The Killing Fields (1984). We hope Parasite's Oscar win at the start of 2020 was a fine omen of changes to come considering that the year that followed was actually a strong one for Asians in movies.

CAPE (Coalitions of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) and Gold House have teamed up for a first, we hope annual, group of awards called the "Gold List" honoring Asian Achievements in (mostly) English language cinema. Please note that is not a critics group, but an industry-group (creatives, executives, and "other entertainment leaders"). Their list of ten categories (with two winners in each) is after the jump... 

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